Keep on Pushing, Liz

When I was a little kid, my parents tell me that they would come upon me crying my eyes out from time to time while holding something really heavy.

"What's wrong?" They would ask.
"It's too heavy!" I would ball.
"Then put it down, Silly."
"No!"

And I would cry and cry that whatever I was carrying was too heavy and never put it down. Nobody could help me because I refused to help myself.

I think those stories are akin to my lifelong tendency to take on problems in the same way over and over. The first time, it doesn't work out, so I set out to do it again, this time better, this time stronger. I resolve to push harder this time. Then my plans fail miserably once again, and on and on it goes. It hasn't escaped me that doing something the same way over and over expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

When I first started teaching, Wilhelm used to refer to my "losing battles." I would start a unit that was destined for failure for one reason or another and then keep trying and keep pushing long after it was dead and needed to be discarded.

So, today I figured out that I need to discard the unit we've been donig in tenth grade. The text is simply too hard.

The same goes for other areas of my life, especially with my MFZ. I thought I was done ever treating men like anything other than friends. I thought I had them out of my system that way. I was sick of the roller coaster; sick of the crap. Then I turn around and find myself pushing just as hard as I was before and getting absolutely nowhere. Over time, I guess pushing and pushing has become a hard-to-break habit. More specifically, I tend to pursue men -- I mean, even if I just want to be friends -- far past the point where pursuance is wise or prudent or anything besides just downright annoying. My Aunt Becky once told me, "Honey. You obviously don't understand how men work. They like to be in control. They don't like to feel pursued." Fair enough, but I have to still be me. Still, there is no reason to continually put pressure on relationships that don't exist in the first place and I'm finding I still do that and I don't want to. So, God and I kind of made a deal . . . .or, should I say, I kind of made a deal with God. (I think he's copacetic): if I quit pushing and quit trying and quit fighting losing battles, then I will give to him what I'm fighting about and I want him to take care of it. We shouldn't tell God what to do, but it's more like I want to say, "Here, God. I'll let this go if you'll take care of it because it's really important to me. Please don't just file it under unimportant and never get around to taking care of it. Please take care of it for me because I'm really sick of it remaining unresolved in my life."

But that's the hamster wheel I'm running in. I don't like things unresolved but I don't often have a choice, so I just stay uncomfortable. I should just learn to live comfortably with ambiguity. Still working on that one.

Well, time to go. I've got a new 10th grade unit plan to get started.

Elisabeth